U NIT ED NATIONS
For some NGOs, female staff guarantees are a red line for continuing Afghan aid Armed with $1.2 billion in donor pledges and two pages of written assurances and requests from Taliban leaders, UN officials say they’re prepared to scale up emergency relief to avert a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Afghanistan. But female aid staff need clear guarantees that they can work safely and independently before aid operations can fully restart, representatives of several humanitarian NGOs warned in conversations with The New Humanitarian. “What we see is that [permission] is very dependent on the provinces, and which province you’re working in, and which sector,” said Athena Rayburn, director of advocacy for Save the Children in Afghanistan. “So at this stage those written assurances haven’t translated into blanket approval for female staff.” Taliban leaders have promised to remove “impediments” to aid, to protect humanitarian workers, and to safeguard aid offices, according to a 15-point proposal addressed to the UN’s humanitarian aid coordination arm, OCHA, and signed by the Taliban’s acting minister of foreign affairs, Amir Khan Muttaqi. The 10 September statement, which has
circulated among aid groups this week, also echoed previous pledges to commit to “all rights of women … in the light of religion and culture”. An aid worker at an international NGO called the Taliban statement “too generic to allow for aid organisations to produce robust plans”. The aid worker asked not to be identified as the issue is considered sensitive. Some aid workers call the Taliban letter a positive first step. But they’re also looking for clear wording that female staff will be welcome – and for assurances that ground-level Taliban in far-flung areas are on board. “If women are prevented from delivering humanitarian services, we become complicit in the entrenching of gender inequality.” The issue underscores the differing red lines and approaches to aid restarts within the humanitarian sector since the Taliban toppled the Afghan government in mid-August. While all aid groups have stressed the importance of female staff, some have been quicker to resume services – with or without women workers in place. The UN’s refugee agency and its partners, for example, reported being operational in two thirds of Afghanistan’s districts, but female humanitarians “have only been
permitted to work in specific sectors in some provinces”. An aid worker at an Afghan NGO told The New Humanitarian that female staff there were mostly “working remotely”. Several larger aid groups worry that proceeding without on-theground female staff sets a dangerous precedent: Gender restrictions could be normalised, along with a maze of wildly differing regulations depending on location. Especially in conservative communities, only female aid workers can speak to women for programmes and needs assessments – meaning the views of half the population could be ignored if female staff were completely absent. UNHCR estimates 80 percent of Afghans displaced this year are women or children. “We have taken the position that we are not willing to resume without the meaningful participation of our female staff and beneficiaries,” said Eileen McCarthy, advocacy manager for the Norwegian Refugee Council in Afghanistan. Anita Bhatia, executive director for UN Women, said: “If women are prevented from delivering humanitarian services, we become complicit in the entrenching of gender inequality in the public sphere.”
Negotiating with the Taliban Afghanistan already faced layers of crises before the Taliban’s resurgence. Some 3.4 million people are internally displaced, about half the population is projected to need aid, and a severe drought threatens harvests and food supplies. The fallout after the Taliban takeover has exacerbated these crises. The economy is imploding, food prices are rising, and the aiddependent public health sector is on the edge of collapse due to donor funding freezes. UN officials say 14
AUSTRALIAN PEACEKEEPER
